Renovations modernize Newman school building

The Newman School renovation project has given students and staff a variety of benefits they can look forward to this coming year.

Wei-Huan Chen

The Newman Elementary School renovation project has given students and staff additional benefits to enjoy this coming year.

Among them are a new auditorium, kitchen facilities, an expanded lobby, a conference room, air conditioning units, whiteboards, painted walls, ramps and a repaved playground area, all of which will be showcased at a town-wide homecoming event on Oct. 18.

As students and parents could see during the first week of school, what began as a project to give the school a safe-to-breathe ventilation system has now also provided for a more colorful, handicap accessible, efficient and environmentally friendly place.

The $24 million, five-year project required classrooms to relocate to two modular sites during the 2011-2012 school year. It aimed to repair an old and hazardous air ventilation system that alarmed the community in 2007 when students and staff experienced “respiratory and other symptoms,” according to the school department’s website.

The project made way for a bevy of other building improvements, which includes the most technologically advanced auditorium in Needham, said assistant principal Greg Bayse.

“It’s going to serve the rest of the community as the primary theater space in Needham,” he said. The auditorium will become a resource for Needham Community Theatre, Needham High School musical productions and public events such as the annual Town Meeting in the spring.

Touring the building on a hot afternoon during the first week of school, Bayse listed the many new installations and improvements to the building. Walking past the cafeteria toward the auditorium, he emphasized the clean, cool air in both rooms, which had no air conditioning prior to the renovations.

“You open yourself up to mold without A/C,” said Bayse. “Plus, you don’t want a lunchroom filled with sweaty 12-year-olds.”

Entering the auditorium, he pointed to the new catwalks, stage and seats. He flicked on a switch to activate a series of round, futuristic LED lights lining the walls that flash rhythmic, multicolored patterns. Theater performers can program the lights to fit their choreography and music, although the lights may be so impressive, Bayse half-joked, that they risk distracting the students.

Originally built in the 1960s as a middle school, the Newman building was seen as an innovation in grade school architecture. However, many features can be a little outdated now, said Bayse, such as the raised floors that, seen from the outside, give the two-story building a Lego-esque geometrical design. The renovation added ramps for handicapped students, who previously encountered steps at each entry point.

Another highlight of the project is repaving the playground surface, which has set the groundwork for a new play structure. Construction is slated for mid to late September, if the parent-led Support the Newman Playground group raises enough funds for it—the renovation project paid for reworking the playground surface but not for building a new play structure.

The group’s website can be found at newmanplayground.org.

Finally, the aesthetic changes of the building’s interior—a bright blue, purple and yellow color scheme, new glossy checkered floorboards—present a more vibrant and visually stimulating learning environment. It was a deliberate move on the part of the architects to appeal to the school’s age range, said Bayse.

Principal Jessica Peterson said she was glad to reunite the school after a year of the school split into two modular sites.

“The challenge last year was having two campuses in two different locations,” she said. “We’re excited that, once again, we’re one community, one campus.”

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